Field

Brazil, Latin America, Economic History, Atlantic History

Research Interests

William Summerhill has taught at UCLA since 1994. After having taken his M.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science at the University of Florida he received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1995. His research focuses on the determinants of long-run political and economic change in Latin America, with particular emphasis on Brazil.

He has been a visiting professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, and held multiple appointments at Departamento de Economia of the Universidade de São Paulo, most recently in 2014 with another stint coming up in 2015. He was a visiting research scholar at the Escola de Pós-Graduação em Economia of the Fundação Getúlio Vargas (EPGE-FGV), and a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution. The National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, the Social Science Research Council, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities have supported his research. He has presented invited talks at the Universidade de São Paulo, EPGE-FGV, the Instituto de Estudos de Política Econômica/Casa das Garças, and the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, among other Brazilian universities, as well as the Banco de la República (the central bank of Colombia). At present he is completing a book on slave traders and the fiscal origins of institutional change at the time of independence in Brazil. He is co-editor of the Revista de Historia Económica.

Before taking up a career in research and teaching (and occasionally after) he served as an Army paratrooper. In Bosnia-Herzegovina he was responsible for the U.S. Army component of a joint program with USAID to reconstruct war-damaged local infrastructure in ways that elicited compliance with the Dayton peace accords.

Notes

Interview in Valor Econômico, with comments on the history of regulation in Brazil, the role of the state, and the politics and economics of newly discovered oil reserves ("camada pré-sal"): "Lições da história econômica"

Coverage of Summerhill's work on the history of sovereign debt in Brazil, by the research foundation of the state of São Paulo: "Quem não deve não tem crédito"

"The New Economic History of Latin America: Evolution and Recent Contributions" (with John H. Coatsworth), in The Oxford Handbook of Latin American History, Jose Moya, ed. (Oxford University Press, 2010).

Grants

American Council of Learned Societies Burkhardt Fellowship in the Humanities
National Science Foundation
Fulbright-Hays
National Fellow, Hoover Institution
National Endowment for the Humanities Faculty Summer Research Fellowship

Alongside our existing 12 sub-fields, the History Department supports a number of cross-field clusters. The clusters are intended to attract students and faculty to important themes and current in the historical discipline. The clusters will offer new courses, sponsor outside speakers, and convene Department-based workshops and seminars.